NFL Power Rankings entering Week 15: With so many close wins, how good are the Chiefs?

The 1972 Miami Dolphins are considered by some the greatest team in NFL history. Yet, they were underdogs at many sportsbooks for Super Bowl VII. That means before a 14-7 win over Washington to finish an undefeated season, the 1972 Dolphins weren’t even considered by many oddsmakers to be the best team that season. They played — and beat — a soft schedule. Over time, the enduring accomplishment of going 17-0 has built that team’s legacy to mythic proportions.

As this NFL season moves on, we’re getting closer to the possibility of the Chiefs going 16-1 or 15-2 in the regular season and winning a third straight Super Bowl. They have a two-game lead for the No. 1 seed in the AFC, and if they have just two home games between them and the Super Bowl it’ll be hard to stop them. And we’d rank a Chiefs team like that as one of the greatest ever. But remember what you think about the Chiefs right now.

Kansas City has won an incredible 15 straight one-score games. They’ve won due to a tight end’s toe being out of bounds in the end zone, a defensive pass interference on a fourth-and-16, a missed pass interference call in the end zone, Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles not going for 2 and the win, a blocked field goal, a last-minute drive after falling behind to a 3-10 Panthers team, a botched snap by the 2-11 Raiders when they were in field-goal range to win and then a doinked-in field goal Sunday night. The Chiefs’ +56 point differential is not only the worst of any team 12-1 or better in NFL history, it’s the worst by 33 points, according to Brett Kollmann of “The Film Room.” They rank eighth in DVOA, behind the 6-7 49ers.

We probably won’t remember any of that a decade or two down the road if the 2024 Chiefs win a Super Bowl. We’ll just tell stories about how dominant they were.

Here are the NFL power rankings after Week 14 of the NFL season: